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Aegwynn looked out of the only window of her tower, and knew it was time.
Dawn would be upon her soon; the sun’s hue had a sharpness to it that was like the first glint of a spell. Yes. A good time for magic.
She turned away, hood heavy over her head. Never one for hoods or discretion, the former Guardian of Tirisfal felt strange hiding from eyes that weren’t watching.
But in this case, she could not afford to be complacent. Not when to planned to raise the dead.
The room was sparse of decoration, but filled with a manner of magical reagents and artifacts. Skulls, spellbooks, rare herbs, dragon teeth, and more lined the counters. So much she had accumulated. So much she had researched. He had been dead for some time, and Aegwynn, who knew so much because of her lengthened life, still had sought out more and more knowledge about this single, deadly ritual. She made sure she would do this one thing right for her son, who she had failed in everything else. She knew if she failed this, she would not get a second chance.
She waved a hand, and the bed in the center of the room shuddered. A glow, dim like the beginning of a fog, emanated from the earthen mattress: heat.
The bed had no linens. Just the earthen cot. Aegwynn was wary of even the silliest rumors she’d heard when gathering information about such a ritual, even though she had initially scoffed at them. A troll witch-doctor had said the new body could not touch anything save for the life of the earth for its first moments, lest it grow mad out of over-stimulation; an orc had mentioned that heat, fire, had to be present to help coax back the soul to the land of the living.
And so she had the earth bed, the heat – but only after she had researched such strange things first, and had found the truth of them in books and in history.
Dozens of other stranger things littered the room to help with this ritual – a ritual which had become an amalgamation of perhaps every important and unimportant culture on Azeroth. A monster in its own right, stitched together by stubbornness. A fitting thing, that: a monstrous ritual to fix a monstrous mistake.
Even now Aegwynn remained haunted by how her son had been doomed even from before birth. If only she had felt Sargeras before. If only she had saw the signs before he had fallen into his com. Then all of this could have been averted.
She scowled. No time for such angst now. She had work to do. The ex-Guardian glanced out of the window: dusk. Reds, purples, yellows.Time to work, indeed.
Aegwynn closed her eyes. Energy thrummed within her. Energy she hadn’t used in years, saving up for this one moment, this single moment in time. For her son. For Azeroth.
She opened her eyes. At once, all the candles in the darkening room lit with arcane fire. Cold air suffused around her. The chill of death.
Aegwynn approached the line of counters that surrounded the bed. She extended her hand as she walked, and as she passed each item, she reached out and activated its magic essence. Each began to glow with its own energy: blue, purple, black, white, red. Colors even she had no name for. She pulled forth the energy from Shaman-blessed water, from ancient Vrykul charcoal, from the mummified heart of a Gladekeeper – even a seed from the Red Dragonflight’s Sanctum, gotten with a bargain from an old draconic friend. These and more would bring Medivh back to life. She was magic, and he was magic, and it was magic that he would be born again.
This was not necromancy. No, Aegwynn mused, as she finished the next row of artifacts, her son deserved better than something so droll.
The magus completed her circle of the room, and she turned to survey her work. The hundred-or-so items surrounded the bed in a half-moon crescent. The energy was immense; she felt each items’ magic thrum in her chest, beating like so many hearts. It was almost overwhelming; she had no doubt if someone else stood in the room, they would faint. Or worse.
All was perfect – and yet so simple. Too simple, perhaps. But making life was simple, wasn’t it? It certainly had been with Nielas. Aegwynn allowed herself a small smile.
Then, she raised her hands. The magic and essence of each item reached out to her in a hundred different streaks. They collided with one another before her, and Aegwynn, impatiently, forced the energy of all into a tight, rolling sphere of blue.
The first step, the easiest step, was completed. So more was to come.
She closed her eyes. Now – yes. Now came the harder bits.
Aegwynn reached out with her mind’s eye. Far and farther she traveled, racing past land and sea – until the tower of Karazhan loomed in front of her. The tower she had built, so many years ago. Her old home, and the place of Medivh’s life and death.
She moved her spirit toward the edge of the Tower, where a patch of grass an unseasonal wildflowers grew – the only bloom of color in the dimness. Underneath them lay the bodies of Cook, Moroes, and the Last Guardian.
The graves were undisturbed. This was the last placed Medivh had walked the earth, and its important to the ritual was dire.
But it was not her son’s grave she needed, nor his rotting body – or what remained of it. It was his memories – for death had power, and most of all, so did the essence of a final moment of life.
Aegwynn was prepared; she’d practiced this many times over the years as she planned for this moment. She tuned herself with the essence of the shaman-blessed water, a farseer’s tool, and looked into the hazy spirit realm.
A cool magic swept over her spirit. The scene stayed the same, but there was now a sharpness to it, a clarity. She reached out toward Karazhan, groping like a fool in the dark – until her energy focused onto a colder patch deep in the tower: the place of a death.
Dusk was ending; she was running out of time. Aegwynn coiled her magic around that patch and pulled it toward her.
Images flashed. In front of her stood an old man, sword in hand; behind him, a burned warrior got to his feet.
“I never meant to harm anyone,” she – no, Medivh, she saw from her son’s eyes – said. “I only wanted to have my own life.” He raised a hand – and the old man plunged the sword into his chest. Aegwynn would have gasped with the suddenness, the bitterness, of the pain if she could. Instead, her son only made a curious, startled noise.
“Thank you,” he said. “I fought it off as long as I could…”
And then – peace.
The last moments of Medivh trickled from her and finally fell away.
Aegwynn steeled herself. She had expected it, and still, the ache of it struck deep into even her old, old heart.
But she could not break the ritual to weep for her son, for she was not one to cry; she was one to work.
She opened her eyes.
Again she was in her tower – but joining the sphere was now a yellow-gold rim that rotated about it. An anchor; a constant.
She glanced at the bed, and with a single word, summoned perhaps the most important artifact of all: an oily raven feather. It sat placidly on the earthen mattress.
An almagamation of magic essence from all over the world and beyond; the chillend moments of Medivh’s death; a token of his own essence; and her own unfathomable power.
All was ready. The time had come.
Aegwynn braced herself.
Now.
She thrust the sphere of magic out. It sailed over the bed -
And exploded.
Energy burst through the room. Light and unnatural shadow shook and sparked. It was like the birth of a star – or the death of one. A sound like the very fabric of reality tore from the center of the quickly eroding sphere. Aegwynn cringed and strengthened the wards around her. A pressure from within the sphere threatened to suck her into it, to consume her life, and she would not allow it. She stood tall and watched the magic transform as she willed it to.
She focused. She focused like she had never done before. All the schools of magic and beyond – indeed, the very forces of life and death – had to be carefully controlled by her, and her alone, or else the amalgamation she had created would never correctly stabilize itself. Her energy drained from her, but she saved some for the hardest part that had yet to come.
The tower shook.
Aegwynn grit her teeth. Almost there – she felt the border giving -
The sphere, the chaotic energy, the lights – all dispersed, and with a suddenness that even the great magus Aegwynn stumbled.
In the sphere’s place, hovering above the bed, was an inky black portal.
It had no dimension; it was like it had been cut out from the light of this world. It made no sound, and even staring at it sent a chill down her neck. Its unnatural aura was like a stain on the soul.
Perfect.
Aegwynn brushed herself off. She glanced at the bed.
The feather was gone.
She looked at the portal, and knew the spirit of her son loomed close. For the afterlife – whatever it was, whatever she had forced open – was vast, insurmountable. Souls upon souls. The feather had opened the portal and had transfixed upon the soul that mattered to her. It would also block others from escaping.
This portal was only for her child.
Careful, witch, came the remembered voice of a vrykul shaman, who Aegwynn had sought for knowledge, do not reach in and expect a soul to jump in your hand like a chick seeking warmth. It will fight to stay – wherever it may linger.
Well, Medivh could try to fight all he liked, but Aegwynn hadn’t worked so hard for so many years to come back without results.
She put her hands out and sent a probing spell, a long, sinuous rope of arcane, through the portal. Though she did not touch it with her physical form, the moment her spell snaked inside, a feeling of wrongess assaulted her so bodily Aegwynn fought to keep conscious.
The feeling passed. She scowled and pressed forward. While she could see the tendril of energy go into the portal, she couldn’t see it beyond that – like it was consumed by whatever realm it entered.
Farther and father, Aegwynn sent her magic into the unknown, like a fisherman casting a net into the shallows. Her magic would attract Medivh; that much was fact. Spirits, she had learned, liked the familiar. They rushed toward it. Sought it out.
And what was more familiar than the magic of his own mother?
More and more, the ex-Guardian sent out her essence and magic. Time past – so much time that the sun set and the moon rose and the candles began to give out when Aegwynn did not.
And when the last candle-flame began to die on its wick, Aegwynn finally felt something.
At once, she halted the march of her magic.
It had been a nudge, nothing more, but after so much of nothing? She had found someone. Or, rather, someone had found her.
Slowly, she pulled her magic back – just a touch.
Another nudge. This time, Aegwynn expected it.
With a burst of power, she shot her magic out and caged the area around it.
And she certainly trapped something – for the struggling that ensured shook her to the core. The soul thrashed and writhed within the magic cage. The spirit was so powerful that Aegwynn’s spell almost lost its power. She scowled again and doubled her efforts. Sweat beaded her brow. Aegwynn, one of the most powerful magi to ever live, struggled as much as her captive.
“Medivh,” she called, “Medivh! Enough! Azeroth needs you once again. Come back to me. To us!”
She thought that might coax him. It did the opposite. Any doubt that the soul she had trapped was Medivh fled as the struggling paramounted to a near-frenzy that physically shook her arms as she struggled to keep the cage and her magic in tact. It was like wrestling a dragon – but Aegwynn refused to let go. This was her first, and only, chance.
But struggle as Medivh might, Aegwynn had expected a fight, and she had saved her powers for so many years because of this. With a cry, she tore her magical cage back – bringing her captive with her. Again and again she pulled. How far had she delved? It mattered not. She had him, and would not leave him be.
Finally, sweat-drenched, Aegwynn felt that she had pulled Medivh close enough to the portal to let go -
And she did.
The spirit rush to get away, but she did not let it. She raised her hands and sent a shock of energy through the portal… energy made up of the same energy that the portal had been created from: the essence of magic, Medivh’s life, and her own. Life energy.
She felt the soul inside grow still and dazed.
Aegwynn smiled and raised her arms.
With the last of her saved magic, she reached forward and pulled Medivh toward the portal.
The surface of the portal shimmered and warped. Again she pulled forward. The portal shuddered.
A rush of air blasted into the room. It was cold and it was hot; it was comforting and it was horrifying. For a mere moment, the vague outline of the soul she had forced into the land of the living appeared before disappearing: forced back against the energy of the portal.
Aegwynn focused on the portal, now.
Death took life. But sometimes, life could be taken back from death.
The portal had been made of the same magic that would bring Medivh back to life – for magic was fluid. Magic could be fire, it could be frost, it could transform. It could harm and heal, it could change shapes and transport across the world. All one needed to know was how to direct it.
And magic could create – with the right sacrifice.
Aegwynn shook with effort.
She yelled and cast the last spell – one suffused with part of her own life.
It struck the inky form, the unnatural thing, the thing that had been a portal, and the thing that would now be life.
Life and death collided.
The same lights as before lit the room, but this time in a frenzied, angry way. The two opposite powers struggled, struggled – stopped.
All chaos ended as quickly as it had started. The portal had gone. Replacing it was the sphere again – but it was black. Black and with a depth that it hurt to stare directly at.
All at once, energy burst forward out of the sphere. It rushed toward the bed in near snake-like coils. More and more followed, until the sphere was drained, transferred into dozens of the ribbons of energy that now rushed around one another above the bed.
They began to weave themselves together.
The black energy whipped and wrapped over, under, around each other. It stretched out; filled up. The bed soon had the vague form of a human on it, a mere husk, an outline.
The coils worked.
The outline filled out. The still figure began to take shape. Legs, arms, torso, head. All appeared in the most basic of shapes. It was like watching the birth of a shadow, not the rebirth of a man.
Details rose from the blocky form. Fingers; finernails. Knees, elbows, bony ribs… he had always been so slight and lanky. Nose, closed eyes, hair, both on his head and on his face. Now, it was like a sculpture sculpting itself from obsidian.
The energy continued to cover Medivh’s burgeoning body with the last thing he had worn in life: the raven-cloaked robe.
From the stiff, rock-like form came an unnatural chill, and Aegwynn, stunned, was glad for the orc’s advice about the fire.
At last, color flushed over him. He began to look less like a sculpture, and more like something – alive. The flush of his face. The softness of his hair. The jewels of purple and ruby on his cloak. The pink of his knuckles, the pale tan of skin -
Aegwynn watched. She waited for his chest to rise and fall.
He looked real. Alive. A sleeping person, still on the earthen cot. So much planning, so much waiting, and there he was, her murdered, corrupted son, corrupted and murdered no more.
She reached out toward him.
His eyes flew open. Medivh gasped for air as if he had been drowning. With a swiftness that surprised her, the once-dead mage grabbed his mother’s wrist with a death-hold.
“Medivh,” she said, “it’s alright. Breathe.”
He looked at her with a dazed, unfocused, almost crazed look. His mouth was agape. His chest rose and fell erratically, and from the tight hold, she could feel his heart beating.
“Mother?” he croaked at last.
“It could be no one else,” Aegwynn said. He stared with the same half-crazed stare. “Do you remember nothing?”
He only continued to stare at her. He let go of her, but more of an afterthought than anything. She said nothing. To her knowledge, nothing quite like this had been done before. She had used hundreds of rituals from other cultures to make her own.
So she didn’t know what to expect from him, really, but she could not imagine the shock of waking from the grave.
Slowly, Aegwynn put her hand on his shoulder. He flinched and lurched up to a sitting position, then pushed himself up against the headrest to try to get away from her. She dropped her hand.
Too fast, she chided of herself.
Aegwynn sat on the closest chair and summoned some water for herself. She drank deep as her son adjusted. A weakness of the soul shook at her; she had sacrificed much, and she knew the ramifications had not yet shown themselves to her in full quite yet.
She glanced up after a time of silence. Medivh stared down at his hands with wide eyes. He looked boyish, sitting and staring like that.
Time ticked by. Aegwynn busied herself with regaining her energy.
Finally, a voice: “You brought me back?”
Aegwynn looked up. Medivh stared at her. He looked less dazed – a little, at least.
“Yes.”
He frowned, and he drew his eyebrows together. A look of torment crossed his face. “Why?”
The hoarse voice, the single word, had so much anguish in it Aegwynn for once was at a loss for words. She studied her son, then stood. “You deserve to live again.”
Medivh laughed a humorless laugh and looked away. The sound died as soon as it had started. “I deserve nothing,” he said, staring at the window. “I deserve less than that, I should think. Everything I did -”
“Was at the fault of Sargeras, not you,” she interrupted, anger not at Medivh, but at the Burning Legion’s lord flickering in her voice. “You had no chance of your own. I should have understood what had happened to you, when you were young. But I didn’t. And my ignorance led to your downfall.”
“Mother -”
“No. This was my duty. This is not a gift to you, or some sacrifice of my part.” She scowled, then sat again as a wave of weakness washed over her. “I failed. But my failure shouldn’t mean your death. You deserve to have your own life.”
He stared at her. They had never had the closest of relationships, truth be told. She had been busy, being the Guardian before he had come into his powers. And she had simply left him with his father. Visits had been brief but nice, but not enough. Her care for him was great, but apparently it had not been great enough to intervene when he had drawn into himself.
So perhaps, she realized, she had done this not for Azeroth, but simply for her son. For everything she had failed to do. Duty not as the Guardian, but as his mother.
Perhaps. Perhaps. It sounded all so touchy to her, but she could not find the will of her usual steel heart to brush such thoughts away.
Medivh looked away. He felt at his chest, as if searching for the hilt of the sword that had slew him.
“My own life,” he said, and the wistfulness of his voice rose clear. “Imagine that.”